MONTPELIER – The House passed a Senate bill Wednesday that gives permanency to major provisions of Vermont’s physician-assisted suicide law.

The provisions had been set to expire July 1, 2016.

An amendment to repeal the law by Reps. Paul Poirier, I-Barre, and Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, was defeated 83 to 60 after more than two hours of impassioned floor debate.

The law protects physicians from prosecution when they prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally-ill patients who have asked for the prescription and have a prognosis of death in six months or less.

Since the law passed two years ago, seven patients have gone through the statutory process of obtaining a prescription for life-ending drugs, said Rep. Sandy Haas, P-Rochester, of the Human Services Committee.

One of the patients died before using the medication. Two patients used the medication to end their lives, Haas said.

To start the process, a patient makes two oral requests for the lethal prescription 15 days apart. Two doctors are required to affirm the patient’s terminal diagnosis and a six-month prognosis, Haas said.

The patient also is required to make a written request in the presence of two witnesses who are uninterested parties.

The patient must be able to self-administer the medication.

Physician must wait 48 hours after all requirements before writing a prescription, Haas said.

Due to the few number of patients who have received life-ending prescriptions, the Department of Health so far has been barred from reporting data about the patients, Haas said. Federal law, specifically the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, prohibits the release of individually identifiable health information.

A new provision in the bill requires the Department of Health to gather details about the patients who use the prescriptions and to release a biennial statistical report about those patients, beginning in 2018. The report would be withheld if the number of patients is so small that the release of the statistics would identify the patients.

Rep. Rodney Graham, R-Williamstown, said he opposes physician assisted suicide as a result of his own experience with cancer and asked the House to repeal the law.

Graham said he was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 42 and was told he had six months to live. Had physician assisted suicide been legal in Vermont at the time, Graham said he may have opted for that, but later, he tried a new treatment that put his cancer in remission.

“If I had taken the option of suicide, I would not have seen my daughter graduate from college,” Graham said.